Travel Guide 2016

W Doha

Sometimes an event can make a hotel – can put it on the map and add some sequined jazz hands to a city’s scene. The hotel: the W Doha. The event: brunch – a Friday institution in the Gulf, and one that’s been razzle-dazzled and jazzed up at the hotel’s Spice Market restaurant with, well, jazz. So the crowds arrive and the music starts and everyone shimmies between vast displays of everything you could possibly want to eat and drink. Especially mimosas. Lots of mimosas. It’s the highlight of the week and they stay for hours. Upstairs are the usual funked-up W-playful rooms, with a few nice nods to the location, like abstract Arabic flowers on the walls and black fringing around the beds. More nods in the marble lobby, strung with huge Smurf-blue glass lamps – very pretty. But brunch is where it’s at – it’s jumping, it’s thumping. It’s a scene.